


A Thousand Years’ Time

by parachutewoman



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M, Post: Season 3 Episode 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23160169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parachutewoman/pseuds/parachutewoman
Summary: Jack Harkness promised he would never forget Ianto Jones. He just didn't know how difficult that would be.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	A Thousand Years’ Time

“In a thousand years’ time, you won't remember me,” Ianto Jones had told him, despairingly, his tearful muted blue eyes straining to see.

“Yes, I will,” Jack tried to assure him. “I promise.”

It was a vow he never intended to break. After centuries of swindling those close to him, telling paramours he would memorise the taste of their lips when he could hardly remember their name, bidding farewell to comrades he knew he’d never think of again, he truly believed he would remember Ianto Jones for the rest of his life.

For the rest of time.

The promise was as sincere as his calls to the 456 to take it all back. He would give them the children - he would give them more than they asked - just to offer Ianto the chance of surviving Thames House. It was unjust, and selfish, but it was what his heart wanted.

But the 456 had not entertained his bargaining. Ianto had died, suffocating in Jack’s arms, pleading with him to hold onto what little time they’d spent together.

“In a thousand years’ time, you won’t remember me.”

The words haunted Jack.

In his dying breath, Ianto Jones had spoken not words of love, but of fear. He had ascended this realm believing that his relationship to Jack was destined to be an unread footnote in the infinite pages of his life story.

Jack never knew if his promise had convinced him that he would never - _could_ never – forget. It sickened him to realise he’d left Ianto uncertain of what he meant to him, and what he would _always_ mean to him.

How could he possibly forget Ianto Jones?

A millennia was a mere fragment of a moment in the endless landscape of Jack’s existence. An insultingly short period of time to overlook such an incredible man and his undying love for everything he stood for.

After the horrors of the 456 faded from the world’s collective consciousness, Jack would still remember Ianto Jones. When their youngest victim had grown old, born children of their own, and began preparing for their fatal slumber, Jack would _still_ remember Ianto Jones. Once the final strand of human DNA had ceased to be, having found itself exorcised from the gene pool by the grand inquisition of natural selection, Jack would _still remember Ianto Jones._

Or so he thought.

But beneath the veneer of eternal life, Jack was still human, and his mind was not capable of withstanding the life he would forever go on to lead.

It had taken only a few hundred years for Jack to realise that remembering Ianto Jones was not as easy as he’d hoped.

As the seasons of time rose and fell over Jack’s life, the echoes of that beautiful man slowly became faint in his mind. Desperate not to betray his word, he’d sketch what he remembered of his face in the stars, clinging to the idea that his memory must be preserved because his love could not be replicated. There would be no other Ianto Jones.

But even then.

It was only natural to believe that no two people could be alike, the way scientists had determined every snowflake must be unique. It was a simple fantasy, a desperate attempt at immortality in the eyes of God. But in his travels, Jack experienced first-hand the similarities of mankind. Its limited moulds of flesh and blood.

That was not to say there was a replica of Ianto Jones, buried in time, but there were those who came hauntingly close. Organisms whose touch obscured the specificity of the man he had once held in his arms, dying, desperate to be remembered.

Awash with guilt, he found his former lover’s name feeling suddenly heavy in his mouth. He repeated it every so often, sometimes leaving decades between each murmur, noting how it was sounding more and more alien. Distant. Welsh.

Sometimes the whirling sound of machinery, the coarseness of a laugh sounding in the dark or the brushing of his hand against a stranger would remind him of a man he once knew, but it was not the same.

Then, his Doctor came.

In what he would later see as an act of mercy, the Time Lord had visited him and, in his own unique way, given him permission to grieve. Not for Ianto, but for his memory.

Standing stoic in the entrance of the bar, the blinking blue and green coordinates of passing cargo ships flashing behind him, The Doctor had waited silently until Jack turned to meet his eyes.

Jack looked back to read the slip of paper with the new recruit’s name scrawled on it, passed to him by a tired looking bartender with instructions clearly given to him by the Time Lord long before Jack had even stepped into the establishment.

He’d been confused at first, even offended by the thought that the Doctor, of all his confidants, had believed Jack’s sorrow could be cured by the company of a passer-by.

But before Jack could indulge this slight, his thigh felt the presence of Alonso Frame shuffle himself onto the bar stool beside him. He looked down at the young shipman, eyes dazed and brow furrowed, mellowing in his own mundane turmoil. 

It was in that moment, Jack realised why The Doctor had presented this fellow interloper to him.

The Doctor knew his own regeneration brought with it almost limitless chances at life, but he had learned long ago that it didn’t give him reason to stop him opening his hearts to mortal souls. He would love so many companions – Jack among them - but no matter how many were lost to the mercy of impermanence, there was always room for more on the TARDIS.

The Doctor had made sure that every companion, every partner, every lover, knew that he didn’t see them as a fragment of his infinitely expanding universe. The honour was his, just to be a part of their finite world. 

He had gifted the meeting with Alonso to impart that wisdom onto one of the only people in the universe who would ever need to know it.

Yes, Jack loved Ianto Jones. The Doctor knew that. Upon meeting him, a reckless conman on escape from the Time Agency, he knew the stories of Captain Jack Harkness, the immortal Lothario, whose adulation for love had made him infamous. He would go on to name galaxies after his former lovers, Ianto among them, which The Doctor had already passed through unknowingly in his broken time machine.

He knew even then that the love for Ianto Jones must have been immense and particular and painful.

Yes, Jack loved Ianto Jones, but he would love others. Some just as much.

He could not help to forget Ianto Jones one day. Time, a heartless dealer, would consume the precious memories he held dear at some point. The human brain could not comprehend so much life. It was not designed for it.

He needed Jack to know it would not be wise to fight that inevitability. 

Into what could have been his tenth century, maybe his hundredth – he’d stop counting - the memory of Ianto Jones ceased to exist. The guilt he once experienced for generations had now long passed.

All he knew was that he had changed. He knew he had forgotten something, someone, but the sheer mass of bodily figures that flooded his mind clouded any sense of recognition. He would sometimes lay there silent, his body numb, knowing he had lost a part of him.

How was Jack to know he would forget him?

He couldn’t have imagined how long an eternity would be.

But Ianto had known he would forget.

Ianto knew everything.


End file.
